The authorities said on Tuesday that they had opened a homicide investigation after a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was fatally shot at his home in Brookline, Mass.

The professor, Nuno F.G. Loureiro, 47, was a member of the departments of nuclear science and engineering and physics, as well as the director of M.I.T.’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, the school said.

The Norfolk County District Attorney’s Office said the police responded on Monday night after receiving a report of a man shot at his home. The office said that Dr. Loureiro was brought to a hospital with gunshot wounds, and that he was pronounced dead on Tuesday morning. An office spokesman, David Linton, said on Tuesday that there had not been any arrests in the case.

The Brookline police chief, Jennifer Paster, said that she had deployed patrol cars and officers to Dr. Loureiro’s neighborhood.

“This remains an active and ongoing homicide investigation,” she said in a statement. “In order to protect the integrity of the investigation, we are limited in the information we can share at this time and ask for the community’s understanding and patience.”

Ted Docks, the special agent in charge of the F.B.I. in Boston, said there “seems to be no connection” between the fatal shooting of Dr. Loureiro and a shooting at Brown University on Saturday that killed two students.

M.I.T. said it was encouraging members of the campus community who may be affected by Dr. Loureiro’s death to reach out for support.

“This shocking loss for our community comes in a period of disturbing violence in many other places,” the president of M.IT., Sally Kornbluth, said in a statement. “It’s entirely natural to feel the need for comfort and support.”

M.I.T. named Dr. Loureiro director of the Plasma Science and Fusion Center in May 2024, putting him in charge of one of the school’s largest labs, where more than 250 researchers, staff members and students work in seven buildings with 250,000 square feet of lab space.

In January, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. announced that Dr. Loureiro was one of nearly 400 scientists who had been awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. The administration called it the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on outstanding scientists and engineers at the start of their careers.

M.I.T. said the National Science Foundation had nominated Dr. Loureiro for the award because of his work on the generation and amplification of magnetic fields in the universe.

Dr. Loureiro, who was born and raised in Portugal, received an undergraduate degree in physics from the Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon and a doctorate in physics from Imperial College London in 2005. After postdoctoral work at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory in New Jersey and the Culham Center for Fusion Energy, Britain’s national laboratory for fusion research, he returned to Portugal to become a principal investigator at the Instituto Superior Técnico’s Institute for Plasmas and Nuclear Fusion, Ms. Kornbluth said.

He joined M.I.T.’s faculty in 2016, and he was appointed deputy director of the Plasma Science and Fusion Center in 2022. He was an expert on a fundamental plasma process called magnetic reconnection, among other areas of research.

“Nuno was not only a brilliant scientist, he was a brilliant person,” Dennis Whyte, a former director of the Plasma Science and Fusion Center, said in an obituary published by M.I.T. “He shone a bright light as a mentor, friend, teacher, colleague and leader, and was universally admired for his articulate, compassionate manner.”

CNN Portugal reported that Portugal’s minister of foreign affairs had announced Dr. Loureiro’s death in Parliament. On Tuesday, the U.S. ambassador to Portugal, John J. Arrigo, released a statement expressing his condolences to Dr. Loureiro’s family, friends and colleagues.

“We honor his life, his leadership in science, and his enduring contributions,” Mr. Arrigo said.